Ten students from St James recently joined students from St Lukes, Cranbrook, Exmouth Community college, Maynard, Tiverton and St Peters in an event aimed at ‘Girls into STEM’ which was held at the Maynard School.

The day comprised two team challenges as well as some talks and Q&A session delivered by five women currently in a range of engineering careers. For the first challenge students had to design a new product aimed at improving the well being of any target audience. They then had to present their idea to the ‘Dragons.’ Our teams designed a portable sensory tent that parents could use and adapt if they had children with specific sensory needs and a diffuser that was also a calming light so that it would allow people to destress during the day.

The second team challenge was to calibrate and programme ‘Ozobots’ and then design a map that the Ozobot had to navigate, adding in additional tricks as it completed the journey.

The final part of the day was the presentations by the STEM ambassadors and the students heard talks from women in a range of different engineering roles, highlight the different routes that they had taken to get into their current roles.

The day was a great opportunity for the students to hear about the different skills and routes into engineering, looking in detail at how design ideas are brought to market as well as working collaboratively in teams and with students from other schools in the area.